Anthropology and Archaeology: Year In Review 2009

Investigators identified the remains of Copernicus, debated the taxonomy of Ida, and published new information on Ardi. Archaeological discoveries included the extensive Staffordshire Hoard, the oldest Venus figurine, and a long-lost 15th-century Tibetan library. Two large panels unearthed in Guatemala authenticated the first written version of the Popol Vuh.

Anthropology

The 47-million-year-old Eocene primate fossil Darwinius masillae.The theory proposed by an international team of researchers that D. masillae constituted a missing link between humans and earlier ancestors was later rejected by most paleoanthropologists.University of Oslo—PA Photos/LandovKey developments in the field of physical anthropology during 2009 included news about the reconstruction and analysis of an extraordinarily complete skeleton of a controversial Eocene primate. The 47-million-year-old adapiform primate, Darwinius masillae, was announced to the world on May 19 via the most extensive public relations multimedia campaign in the history of primate paleontology. The specimen was originally unearthed in 1983 near Messel, Ger. (then in West Germany), and was cleaved into two parts that were subsequently sold separately. Jørn H. Hurum from the University of Oslo in 2006 reunited the two fossil-bearing slabs and assembled an international team of researchers who described the nearly complete (albeit crushed) specimen, which lacked only part of the lower left leg. The remains, nicknamed Ida, were those of a juvenile female who would have attained a body weight of 650–900 g (23–32 oz) had she lived to adulthood. She was probably nocturnal, and her incredibly well-preserved digestive tract contents indicated a diet of leaves and fruit. An agile arboreal quadruped, she inhabited a rainforest and died near a volcanic lake. She also possessed a mixture of primitive and advanced morphological traits that led to controversial claims about her taxonomic relationships and phylogenetic position within the order Primates. The authors proposed an unorthodox taxonomy: that the adapiform D. masillae represented an early haplorhine, a group that includes the tarsiers as well as the anthropoids (monkeys, apes, and humans). The consensus favoured by most experts not connected to the research team placed Darwinius and other adapiforms within the lemurlike strepsirhines and not among the haplorhines. Thus, the well-publicized conjecture that Darwinius was a linking form between lemurlike primates and anthropoids—hence an ancestor of humans—was considered to be false by many of the world’s leading paleoanthropologists.

A group of Polish scientists with the assistance of a geneticist from Uppsala (Swed.) University identified the skeletal remains of Nicolaus Copernicus, the world’s most famous astronomer. Copernicus, who died in 1543, was buried in the Frombork (formerly Frauenburg) Cathedral (now in Poland). Although the cathedral contained more than 100 mostly unnamed tombs, experts suspected that Copernicus’s grave would be located near the St. Cross Altar because he had been in charge of this altar when serving as an unordained canon at the cathedral. Several skeletons were excavated near the St. Cross Altar in 2005, and subsequently, on the basis of a cranio-facial reconstruction, one incomplete skeleton of a 60–70-year-old male was proposed to be that of Copernicus.

DNA analyses presented in July confirmed this putative identification. DNA was extracted from three upper molars and both femora of this skeleton, and the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) profiles of these different samples were identical, which implied that the cranium and postcranial samples represented a single individual. Although no relatives who could provide a DNA reference sample had been identified, investigators found a clever substitute source. By carefully examining Copernicus’s heavily annotated copy of Johann Stoeffler’s calendrical treatise Calendarium Romanum magnum (published 1518)—which had resided at Uppsala since the mid-17th century—they found nine hairs, two of which possessed the identical mtDNA profile of the molar and femur samples. As a result, those strands of hair could be used as a reference sample for his skeletal DNA and thereby confirmed the identification of the skeletal remains as his. Interestingly, although portraits of Copernicus usually showed him with dark eyes, genetic analysis revealed that he had the genotype predominant among blue- or gray-eyed humans and thus actually may have had a light iris colour.

Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania led an international team of scientific collaborators who spent more than a decade collecting and analyzing the largest African genetic database yet assembled. The team genotyped a panel of 1,327 polymorphic markers in 2,432 Africans from 121 geographically diverse populations. They also genotyped 98 African Americans and 21 Yemenites and incorporated data from 952 previously studied individuals from around the world. Statistical analysis indicated 14 ancestral clusters present in the African data set. Strong associations between geography, language, and genes reflected the concomitant spread of people, languages, and sometimes culture or ethnicity. Genetic diversity was generally highest in African populations and declined with increasing distance from Africa consistent with serial founder effects that resulted from global migrations that initially departed from northeastern Africa near the midpoint of the Red Sea. The analyses also indicated that modern human migration within Africa may have originated near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola, an area that constitutes the current San homeland. The San speak Khoisan (Khoesan) languages characterized by click sounds. The genetic analyses further suggested that the southern African Khoisan speakers, the eastern African Khoisan-speaking Hadza and Sandawe, and the central African Pygmies are all remnants of a widespread proto-Khoisan-Pygmy population of hunter-gatherers that existed more than 35,000 years ago. According to this intriguing scenario, the Pygmies were originally Khoisan speakers who, in a rare example of complete language replacement, subsequently adopted the nonclick Niger-Congo languages spoken by their neighbours. Among the other populations studied, African Americans had primarily West African roots, deriving 71% of their ancestry from both Bantoid and non-Bantoid Niger-Congo-speaking populations, only 8% from the rest of Africa, 13% from European admixture, and the remaining 8% from a number of different source populations.

The October 2 issue of the journal Science devoted much space to the skeletal biology, paleoecology, and evolutionary position of the 4.4-million-year-old hominin (hominid) Ardipithecus ramidus found at Aramis, Eth. (Ardipithecus represented a less-specialized grade of hominin than the later australopithecines.) (SeeSpecial Report.)

Archaeology

Eastern Hemisphere

Part of the Anglo-Saxon treasure known as the Staffordshire Hoard is displayed at the Birmingham (Eng.) Museum and Art Gallery in September 2009.Eddie Keogh—Reuters/LandovIn 2009 the largest-known trove of Anglo-Saxon treasure was unearthed in a farmer’s field in Staffordshire, Eng. Discovered by local resident Terry Herbert with his metal detector, the find was later excavated by archaeologists from the University of Birmingham and the Staffordshire County Council. The so-called Staffordshire Hoard was dated to the 7th century ce and was composed of more than 1,500 pieces of gold and silver, weighing 5 kg (11 lb) and 2.5 kg (5.5 lb), respectively. Among the rarest items in the hoard were fragments of a gold helmet—only four helmets from the period had been previously found—and a gold strip bearing the Latin inscription “Surge Domine et dissipentur inimici tui et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua” (“Rise up, o Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face”). The Staffordshire Hoard dwarfed the cache of objects recovered in 1939 at the Anglo-Saxon burial site of Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, whose precious gold weighed 1.66 kg (3.7 lb).

Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley, southwestern Germany, continued to yield extraordinary Ice Age finds, among them the world’s oldest Venus figurine. Dated to more than 35,000 years ago and carved out of mammoth ivory, the 6-cm (2.4-in)-tall statuette was thought to be the earliest-known example of figurative art, predating previous finds by some 5,000 years. The figurine was found in six fragments amid domestic debris. Its patina and a loop on its back suggest it may have been worn as a pendent. In addition to the Venus figurine, Nicholas J. Conard and his University of Tübingen, Ger., team recently recovered the remains of three flutes from the Swabian Hills site, one of which was 21.8 cm (8.5 in) long with five holes and was fashioned from the radius of a griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus); the other two instruments were made of mammoth ivory. These artifacts brought to eight the total number of known instruments from the Swabian Aurignacian, which suggested that music was an important element of human cultural expression at this early date.

In Rome archaeologist Françoise Villedieu of the École Française de Rome and her colleagues found the remains of a circular banquet hall with a complex rotation system—thought to have been hydro-powered—within the Domus Aurea, the sprawling Palatine Hill palace built by the Roman emperor Nero (ruled 54–68 ce). The hall, which measures some 16 m (52 ft) in diameter and was likely built of wood, rested upon a 4-m (13-ft)-wide pillar that had four spherical rotating mechanisms, affording Nero’s guests a panoramic view of the city as they dined. This device, like the rest of the palace, was said to have been built atop the smoldering ruins of Rome after the great fire of 64 ce.

The wrecks of five Roman trading ships that had foundered in more than 100 m (330 ft) of water between the 1st century bce and the 5th century ce were discovered during a survey of the seabed near the remote Italian island of Ventotene, one of the Ponza Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The ships had been transporting wine from Italy, garum (fermented fish sauce—a key condiment in ancient Roman cuisine) from provinces in Spain and North Africa, and metal for making weapons and utensils. According to archaeologist Timmy Gambin of the Aurora Trust, which found the cargo ships, the vessels were likely seeking safe harbour near the island during storms when they sank.

Also in Italy, recent scrutiny of aerial photographs of farmland around the Venetian lagoon—taken in July 2007during a severe drought—revealed details of the ancient Roman metropolis of Altinum, complete with gated city walls; a complex network of canals, streets, and bridges; harbour facilities; and numerous structures, including houses, shops, and an amphitheatre. According to project leader Andrea Ninfo of the University of Padua, Altinum was the only large Roman city in northern Italy and one of the few in Europe that was not buried by later construction. He also stated that the images made it clear that the citizens of the city, which reached its apogee in the mid-2nd century bce, had mastered their marshy environment.

Remains of the oldest-known settlement in the Aegean came to light during excavations in June at Ouriakos on the Greek island of Limnos. There, according to site director Nikos Efstratiou of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 14,000-year-old stone tools were found along with the remains of animal bones and seashells belonging to the Epipaleolithic Period. Before these materials were unearthed, the earliest evidence for organized human activity in the Aegean had come from the so-called Cyclops Cave in the islet of Gioura (Yioura), from the site of Maroula on the island of Kythnos, and from Kerame on the island of Ikaria, all of which postdate the 9th millennium bce.

Also in Greece, ongoing research at the submerged city of Pavlopetri off the Laconian coast pushed back the date of the town’s habitation to c. 2800 bce, more than a millennium earlier than previously thought. The site, thought to be the oldest-known sunken city in the world, covers more than 35,000 sq m (some 42,000 sq yd) and includes streets, houses, temples, and tombs. Current exploration of the site—first identified by Nicholas Flemming of the University of Southampton, Eng., in 1967—was being carried out by Jon Henderson of the University of Nottingham, Eng., and Elias Spondylis of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, a department of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, and was expected to yield abundant new information on trade in the Bronze Age, Minoan, and Mycenaean periods (approximately 3000–1100 bce) as well as on the tectonic events that led to its destruction.

Biomolecular analysis of residue within an amphora recovered from the multichambered tomb of the early Egyptian pharaoh Scorpion I (c. 3150 bce) at Abydos revealed that the ancient Egyptians added a host of herbs and resins to their wines to endow them with medicinal properties. According to Patrick T. McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, who led the study, wines were steeped with herbs, including balm, sage (Salvia), and savory (Satureja), as well as the resins of pine and terebinth (Pistacia terebinthus); analysis of wine residue in a vessel from the 4th- to early 6th-century-ce site of Gebel Adda in southern Egypt, decanted during the last period of winemaking in Egypt prior to the Islamic conquest, yielded traces of rosemary (Rosemarinus officinialis) as well as pine resin, which attested to a long tradition of using herbal wine additives, largely to aid in digestion.

University of Exeter, Eng., archaeologist Alan Outram and his colleagues found the earliest evidence for horse domestication—dated to between 5,700 and 5,100 years ago—at a suite of Botai culture sites in northern Kazakhstan. Equine bones recovered at the four study sites revealed that the horses had had slenderer builds than their wild counterparts—a principal trait of domesticated horses from later Bronze Age sites—and their teeth exhibited wear patterns consistent with bridling. Containers found within pit houses and in nearby middens at the semisedentary village sites also bore traces of fat solids from the horse milk once stored in them. Before this discovery, the earliest-known evidence for horse domestication had come from a series of late 3rd-millennium-bce chariot burials belonging to the Sintashta culture of Central Asia.

Shards of pottery recovered from a cave in southern China’s Hunan province were dated to 18,000 years ago, making them the oldest-known examples of clay craft in the world. Analyzed by Elisabetta Boaretto of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and Xiaohong Wu of Peking University in Beijing, the shards came from at least two ceramic vessels. They were found in Yuchanyan Cave among sediments rich in animal bone and charcoal fragments, bone and shell tools, and cobble and flaked artifacts. The site was thought to have been used as a seasonal foragers’ camp during the Late Paleolithic (beginning about 40,000 years ago). Prior to this discovery, the earliest-known evidence for pottery had come from a suite of Chinese sites in Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangxi provinces, dating to 10,000–16,000 years ago.

And in the isolated Himalayan kingdom of Mustang, once a centre of Tibetan culture and now part of north-central Nepal, Himalaya expert Broughton Coburn and Everest mountaineer Pete Athans in 2007 and 2008 discovered a long-lost library of 15th-century manuscripts, many adorned with illuminated miniatures. Found within Mardzong Cave, part of a rock-hewn monastery complex carved into a cliff face overlooking the upper Kali Gandaki River, the more than 8,000 folios belong to some 30 religious tracts—most associated with Bon, an animist faith that flourished in the region before the arrival of Buddhism in the mid-7th century ce; adherents of the religion still resided in the area. Among the newly discovered volumes was a heretofore-unknown version of the Lubum, a sacred Bon text devoted to the propitiation of naga (Tibetan Lu) serpent deities. The manuscripts, which were discovered during a cave-documentation project, were transported to a local monastery for conservation and study.

Western Hemisphere

In 2009 archaeological research at the Fisher Mounds Site Complex in southern Wisconsin continued to expand knowledge about Cahokia Mounds, the largest and most complex Native American civilization in North America. Led by Timothy Pauketat at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, these excavations uncovered evidence of a small colony of Mississippian peoples originating from the Cahokia area some 800 km (500 mi) to the south near modern-day St. Louis, Mo. These Cahokians apparently brought pots and chert (fine-grained quartz) tools with them, as there was little evidence from excavated features for the use of local lithic materials and clay sources. The Mississippian houses, potsherds, and stone tools recovered from these excavations dated to about 1050 ce, coinciding with Cahokia’s punctuated regional political consolidation. Why Cahokians traveled so far northward was unclear. The absence of a palisade wall at the site, however, indicated that the colony enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence.

Excavations in East St. Louis, Ill., uncovered large portions of one of the largest Mississippian mound centres in the eastern United States. These excavations fundamentally revised archaeological understandings of the Cahokia civilization. Archaeologists had previously believed that the East St. Louis mound centre witnessed its peak residential occupation while the nearby site of Cahokia was being depopulated. On the basis of ongoing excavations by the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program, however, researchers determined that both the Cahokia and East St. Louis sites experienced their highest population densities contemporaneously, indicating a larger regional population than previously posited. To date more than 100 Mississippian buildings and other features had been uncovered, including a burned structure among whose intact artifacts were an elaborately carved stone figurine of a kneeling female holding a marine shell.

Excavations continued at the Topper site near the Savannah River in South Carolina. Topper was once a Paleo-Indian quarry and habitation site where Clovis points were manufactured. Work at the site in 2009 recovered more detailed information about the Clovis occupation of the site. The presence of blades, cores, and flake tools indicated that manufacturing activities beyond the production of bifacial stone tools occurred at Topper. The site was also famous for a controversial pre-Clovis occupation argued by Albert Goodyear to date from c. 15,000 to as early as 50,000 bp. Evidence for this claim consisted of various objects argued to be bend-break unifacial tools. If this claim was proved accurate, it would overturn most current theories for the peopling of the New World.

Excavations at the Chimney Rock site near Pagosa Springs, Colo., provided important insight into Southwestern prehistory. Steve Lekson and a team of excavators from the University of Colorado at Boulder investigated two rooms in the site’s great house to better understand how it was linked politically to the great houses of Chaco Canyon culture some 144 km (90 mi) away in northern New Mexico. Lekson believed the site to be directly affiliated with Chacoan society and used as a lunar observatory by Chacoan elites. Among the information gleaned from these excavations was the possibility that the elites who lived at Chimney Rock enjoyed a diet of deer and elk, while lower-status residents of the site dined on smaller game.

Among the significant Mesoamerican archaeological discoveries in 2009 was that of two large stone sculptures in Mexico City by archaeologist Leonardo López Luján. These works provided additional depth to current understandings of Aztec sacrifice and funeral rituals. The first sculpture, a 13-ton monolith, was discovered in October 2006 and was believed to represent Tlaltecuhtli, a female Aztec deity of the earth, known both for her nurturing symbolism and her voracious thirst for blood. Stone representations of this goddess often served as platforms for the cremation rituals of deceased kings. Pigment residues identified on the surface of the sculpture indicated that it would have been decorated in black, red, and blue. The second sculpture discovered more recently by López Luján depicted a large cactus, believed to have been used as a platform for rituals involving Aztec sacrifice; this interpretation of the sculpture’s function was based on an Aztec legend that indicates that sacrificial rituals performed atop cacti confer the gods’ favour upon the performers.

American archaeologist Richard Hansen points out details of one of the two recently discovered 8-m (26-ft)-long panels carved in stucco from the pre-Classic Mayan site of El Mirador, Guat.Eduardo Gonzales—AFP/Getty ImagesArchaeologist Richard Hansen recently discovered two 8-m (26-ft)-long panels carved in stucco from the pre-Classic Mayan site of El Mirador, Guat., that depict aspects of the Popol Vuh, the Mayan origin story. The panels—which date to about 300 bce, some 500 years before the Classic-period fluorescence of Mayan culture—attested to the antiquity of the Popol Vuh. In explaining how the Mayan gods created the world, the Popol Vuh features the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who were transformed into, respectively, the Sun and the Moon. One of the panels depicts the Hero Twins beneath a bird deity; the other panel features a Mayan maize (corn) god surrounded by a serpent. The panels thus authenticated the earliest written version of the Mayan origin story, transcribed in the 1700s by Spanish colonial priest Francisco Ximénez.

Additional findings at the Classic Maya farming village of Cerén, El Sal., continued to provide major insight into ancient subsistence and food production. Discovered by archaeologist Payson Sheets in 1978, Cerén—which, like the ancient city of Pompeii, was buried in volcanic ash—was pivotal in providing amazing detail about ancient Mesoamerican lifeways. An eruption 1,400 years ago covered the site in 5 m (16.5 ft) of ash, preserving houses and adjacent agricultural plots. The use of ground-penetrating radar and limited test excavations during the 2007 field season revealed the presence of this agricultural field. Excavations at the site in the spring of 2009, however, revealed the extent of intensive cassava (manioc, or yuca) cultivation in the New World, as evidenced in 18 3 × 3-m (10 × 10-ft) excavation blocks. Although the actual cassava plants had long ago decomposed, their presence was revealed in the ash as hollow spaces that, as in Pompeii, were filled with dental plaster to determine shape and size of the missing object. Cassava, a starchy root crop, is rarely preserved archaeologically, unlike the more common Mesoamerican triad of maize, beans, and squash, the seeds of which have durable structures that can survive charring. In tropical and temperate regions, macroscopic plants can remain in preserved form only if they have been carbonized in fires; cassava is composed mostly of sugars, which melt away when burned. As a result, manioc often was overlooked in the reconstruction of ancient Mesoamerican foodways. The recent findings at Cerén thus filled a significant gap.

Analysis of chili pepper DNA by botanists Seung-Chul Kim, Araceli Aguilar-Meléndez, and Mikeal Roose revised previous interpretations of chili domestication in the New World. Kim and his colleagues suggested that chilies, formerly believed to have been domesticated first in central Mexico, were domesticated independently and from several different wild ancestors in different areas of Mesoamerica.